Shorts of Grey

A Counting

There were exactly 2,635,811 blades of grass visible from my position atop the flak tower, ninety-one percent of which were currently straining against the wind. The number fluctuated as the tree canopies swayed in the breeze and obscured patches of fertile ground.

The sun was past its zenith, and my handkerchief was demeritably soggy. I had left my spot badge and merit book on the perpetulite windowsill of the flak tower just in case I fell. As I had never yet fallen I had no evidence that it might occur in the future, but the requirement was not one of mine.

The tin can on my waist jingled, and I held it to my ear.

“Can you see anything?” came my comrade’s call from below.

Even after all these years of furtive escapades with Corine, it still took me a moment to remember to read the meaning behind the words. She didn’t actually want to know if I still had the power of sight.

“No, it isn’t here today,” I said into the can. “No swans either.”

“Okay, come on down.”

I carefully descended down all twenty one bronze spikes stuck into the perpetualite by some preceding heights enthusiast, or a Previous for whatever reason they did anything.

Corine helped me down the final step. It was unnecessary, but showed that she still cared for me, despite not being able to provide what she needed. I fixed my green spot badge onto my lapel.

“There is always tomorrow,” I said, repeating a phrase I had heard a hundred times from other disappointed people.

She nodded and grabbed my hand. We walked slowly back inside the boundary markers. Brownley was a large village near the border of Blue Sector North and Green Sector North, and border villages were always industrious. Where lawful trade flourished, contraband could naturally be found in tall supply. A forward-thinking resident from a prior generation used a standard variable to allow the manufacture of valises with collapsible bottoms, doubling the prescribed volume. Rumour accused the Yellow Prefect of being able to fit entirely into his own valise, complete with fasteners on the inside. His pale skin and notable absence whenever trouble was afoot all but confirmed it.

“It has been fifty-six days and twenty-one hours since you saw the door,” I said. “What if it never reappears?”

“Then it never reappears,” she answered, straightening her Outdoor Adventure #9s lest the other residents thought we had been beyond the boundary markers to make colour in the beauty of nature. She pulled on my sleeve as the village’s arc lamp poked its head above the trees. “Listen, Katie Sky has been telling people that you hit your head on something hard.”

“I did.”

“Yeah, but I mean, she has been telling people this week. Did you say something?”

“Yes. I mentioned that she had eighty-six percent of the hair she had the last time I saw her.”

“Maybe she is just trying to save face,” sighed Corine. Her pinpoint pupils were locked onto my own. “Still, you should be more careful.”

This was another phrase I had heard often, from my mother. I do not remember much of my disastrous hockeyball tryout, but I do remember waking up in the Swatchman’s office knowing exactly how many individual threads made up his coat.

I had been relaxed about keeping that ability to myself until John Lemon was shunned for revealing he could tell the exact temperature of a girl’s ear with his tongue. It was the exact kind of ability that made a resident stand out, and nonconformity bred unruly behaviour which ultimately led to bestial degeneracy on par with the lives of the Riffraff. I never did find out how he got his new talent. Lemon was diagnosed with Variant-F Mildew only one week later.

“I will be careful,” I promised.

We separated before reaching the tea towel factory, and I headed home. My mother had yet to die, and clung on to her Useful Work in the greenhouse like a clutching bramble. She would not be back until dinner time, covered in soil stains and brimming with stories about which residents returned to see the plant that had leaves in a particularly pleasant shade of green.

I was in need of advice, so I headed to the empty loft.

The unfinished stairs were dusty, and the plate outside the door had been emptied of sandwiches. From the amount of food that was apparently eaten after communal lunch – the buffet budget alone accounting for twenty-four-point-six percent of the village’s annual budget – it seemed like almost every house must have had nobody living above it, saying nothing that could be considered, and eating no sandwiches left out for them. If you were careful it was possible to talk about Apocrypha, but they were so utterly undefined in the Rules that there simply weren’t the words for it.

“Master Gerald?” came the creaky voice within, blending perfectly with the squeaky hinges of the door.

“Yes.”

“Thank you for the sandwiches. I had not realised how well ham goes with pocket lint.”

I nodded, which likely went unnoticed in the dark.

“Um, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Of course, is it a girl?”

“Sort of,” I admitted.

“Are you looking for some youknow? I know all the tricks.”

“No, no.” The musty air always made me sweat, and today was no different. “I think my friend is mistaken in something, but she believes it fully.”

“Have you told her your misgivings?”

“No, I do not want to hurt her.”

“Ah.” The Apocryphal Man considered for a moment. I heard him scratch his beard in the dark.

“I like her a lot,” I prompted. “She knows about my counting.”

“Corine Teal?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. Well, I know how to solve your problem. But first you must tell me something. How many swans did you see today?”

“I did not see any swans.”

“How about Riffraff in strange costumes?”

“Zero.”

He then used a Very Bad Word, which was only the third time I had ever heard it in my life. I had yet to work up the courage to say it, but I did once mouth it in the bathroom mirror to see if it really would make me uglier. The results were inconclusive.

After some further beard scratching, he continued. “How many residents has the Head Prefect now moved to Blue Sector North?”

“Between seventy-two and seventy-four.”

“I see. Crumpets.”

“You see crumpets?”

“If only,” he sighed. “Okay, your thing. What does your friend believe that you don’t?”

“She, um, saw a door pop out of the ground near the Outer Markers.”

He remained silent, so I felt compelled to keep talking.

“She said it might have been coloured, but it wasn’t blue. It also wasn’t clear if it was a push or a pull.”

It was like someone had increased the volume of the silence. Neither of us moved.

“What the fuck.”

This was an extremely bad word. I felt the need to take a bath immediately.

“So, what shoul–”

“Here’s what you do,” he interrupted. I sensed he had stood up as his voice now came from above me. “Go to where she said the door was, and leave a red flag in the ground.”

“I can’t see red,” I reminded him. “I’m Green.”

“Of course, a green flag then.”

“I can tell you where it is,” I said helpfully. “From the northernmost flak tower it is eleven thousand, four hundred and twelve steps due thirty-nine degrees northeast.”

“Got a compass?”

“What’s a come pass?”

“Yeah, so do the flag thing.”

“Okay. Will that make Corine happy?”

“Of course it will.” I heard him step closer, and felt his hand upon my shoulder. From the stairwell’s dim ambience I took sight of a non-regulation outfit. The light found purchase in his beard of startling abundance. It also softly illuminated the shape of his enormous head.

I sprinted downstairs, banging my normal-sized head on the doorframe as I exited the kitchen. I had no plan as I ran past fourteen residents, nineteen doorways painted in a variety of univisual hues, and one Yellow Prefect.

“Gerald Seafoam! Stop right there!”

I halted, sweating, panting, and completely unable to consider the demerits coming my way. Terence Goldenrod stood imperiously to his full height and looked down his nose up at me.

“Where are you running to?”

“I– nowhere, sir.”

“You had better be practising for the cross country scone delivery club.”

“There’s a Previous,” I panted. “In my house.”

“Oh, oh dear.” The prefect paled further. I noted a tinge of green in his otherwise cloud-white complexion. “Oh no.”

I leaned back on the stone wall of the abandoned colour garden, the panic washing away in the alarm of the man who had accosted me. After a few moments of flapping his hands and looking around for his valise, he regained enough composure to reprimand me. He took my merit book and fined me ten demerits for running in an undignified manner without holding baked goods, and a further twenty for causing a Prefect to perspire.

“I should give you fifty more for lying,” he said, handing over my book, “but I promised Doreen that I would do something nice today.”

“I am not lying. I saw one.”

“Have your eyes ever deceived you?”

“No.”

“You are lying again. Look at the sky, what colour is it?”

“It doesn’t have a colour for me, sir.”

“But we both know it is blue. Always has been, always will be. Except when it isn’t, of course. You cannot have seen a Previous. Your eyes lied to you. Maybe I should demerit them, too.”

“Yes, sir. But it wasn’t the colour, it was the shape. His eyes were…” I couldn’t finish, it made me sick to my stomach.

The Yellow Prefect looked me over, and put a hand on my shoulder as the man in the loft had. I shuddered. “I think you need to go to the swatchman, immediately.”

“I feel fine, now, sir.”

“Perhaps, but you look like death dragged through a ditch. I’ll take you myself.”

“There’s no need!” shouted my mother as she jogged up to us. She wore a pained smile and a stained pinafore. “Gerry has been feeling under the weather recently,” she said. “I’ll take him to see the swatchman. There is no need to bother an honoured Prefect.”

“Nonsense!” He beamed back. “I must make sure this isn’t another round of the sniffles. Our poor village cannot handle any more sickness.”

“Really, I can handle him. I will report the outcome as soon as the diagnosis has been made.”

I felt wildly uncomfortable being talked about as if I weren’t there. It would have been much better if I wasn’t.

“If you insist,” he conceded. He tipped his hat, “Off you go, then!”

We thanked him, and started walking off.

“Son, what have you done? What did you say?”

“Mum, I saw a Previous. In our house.”

She looked me over, and relaxed a little. “You didn’t tell anybody about your counting?”

“No. Yes, I told the Previous man.”

“You shouldn’t mention that, either. You need to be careful.”

“That’s right! Sprinting without holding jammable treats can lead to serious injury,” broke in the prefect, two paces behind us.

“Sir? I can take me son to the swatchman’s office.”

“And you are doing a great job of it so far. I will let you continue.”

“Thank you. Feel free to go about your very important business. There is no need to bother yourself with us.”

“Of course, I would not do that to myself. Unfortunately for all of us, I happen to live next door to your destination.”

We walked in silence to the swatchman’s office under the less than careful gaze of the prefect, who bade us ‘Apart We Are Together’ as he darted inside his house. I swore I could hear the muffled sound of a valise being hastily opened.

The waiting room was full of twenty-one would-be patients, so my mother warned me to only say I felt a case of the sniffles coming on, and then left to go back to the greenhouse. I walked in, walked out, and walked straight into Terence Goldenrod.

“So, what was the diagnosis?” he asked. He looked worried and was holding tightly to his personal valise.

“Floaties,” I lied. “Swatchman flashed me something to dissolve them.”

His shoulders dropped an full inch and he smiled. “Thank Munsell for small favours and fast medicine.”

“Yes, sir. I will.”

“Do you have any Useful Work to be doing?”

“On my way now, sir,” I said. “I have to teach Bridge to the juniors.”

“Arch or Suspension?”

“What are those?”

“Greened if I know. Off with you, then.”

I went to the library to see if I could borrow Corine, but it was closed for inventorying. As there were no books to inventory, the Blues that worked there had all disappeared. With no desire to teach Bridge nor head beyond the village boundary alone, I returned home.

Tiptoes seemed the best tool for the job, so I used them liberally on my journey up the stairs to my room. The latent energy and blatant anxiety prevented me from relaxing. To keep me occupied, I rearranged my room as quietly as possible. Moving the furniture around gave me something to do, and I think the new arrangement provoked a sense of fresh perspective even with the knowledge of the Previous above weighing down on me.

I was just moving the bed back to its regulated position when I heard the floor creak behind me.

“I need you to take me there.”

The Previous loomed large at the doorway. His wide pupils in bloodshot eyes made me feel instantly nauseous, but his large authoritarian nose, and the very obvious fact that he had been crying, gave me some comfort.

“Please,” he said. “Take me to the door.”

“It isn’t there, sir.” I defaulted to deference, as it was the most comfortable approach.

“When did your friend last see it?”

“Fifty-seven days and two hours ago.”

“So, tomorrow would be two months.”

I did not want to correct him. All months were the prescribed thirty days, although I had heard that the Previous preferred to spread the extra days out to holiday on river banks rather than use all five to celebrate Munsell’s Epiphany in the spring.

“Let’s go, now. Please.”

“Sir, I am already in trouble. If they see me with a Previous, they will send me away to the Outer Fringes, too.”

He walked in and sat on the edge of my bed.

“Listen, son. The swans have stopped because they know something is wrong here. The prefects know it, too. They are sending people away who they want to keep safe.”

“It is the duty of the prefects to keep all residents safe,” I replied.

“All worthy citizens, yes. But the valuation of that worth is up for debate.” His phrasing confused me, but I think I understood his meaning.

“Anyway,” I said. “It is getting dark.”

“Perfect, then nobody will see you.”

“Yes, but I will see nobody and no thing. I cannot see in the dark.”

“I can,” he replied, confirming the informal talk of the Previous’ abilities. “I will guide you, and you will guide me.”

He held out his hand. He looked so sad. It wasn’t his fault that he was different. Corine would have helped him. If the door really was there, then I could tell her all about it. Except for what it looked like, given that everything would be blacker than unmined pitch.

I shook his hand. He gave me a wan smile, told me we would depart when the arc light was turned off, and returned to his hiding place. I stared straight ahead and tried not to count how many trembles had shaken my hands until my mother returned.

As we ate a rushed dinner of noodles and cauliflower I explained that I was mistaken about the man upstairs, it was actually just something neither of us could see, and that the Yellow Prefect was satisfied with the swatchman’s diagnosis of eye floaties. She reminded me to be careful, told me to muffle the radiator as there were some nasty rumours going around that needed sorting out, and went up to bed holding a metal whisk. I did the same, minus the kitchenware, and changed into my Outdoor Adventure #9s and trepidated wildly until I could no longer see anything at all.

The man in the loft crept downstairs, into my room, and nudged my shoulder.

“Come on, Gerald. It’s time.”

“Okay,” I whispered hoarsely.

He helped me up. Navigating the familiar house at night was something everybody learned to do, but it was still terrifying.

He caught me as I tripped over the doormat.

“Can we get Corine?”

“How long does it take to get to the door?”

“Two hours. It is 19:07 now.”

“Then yes, we have time. Where does she live?”

We walked along the paved roads with relative ease, my hand holding his jacket and my heart holding on for its life. We reached Corine’s house, and I told him which window to throw stones at. A sharp shriek told us we’d found the right one.

I tied my tin can’s string to the one dangling amongst the ivy – after explaining it to the Previous man who said it was ‘cute’ – and spoke her name into it.

“Gerald? What are you doing?” came the reply.

“We’re going to the door.”

“At night?”

“The man from the loft can see at night.”

“Okay, help me down.”

The window opened, and my tall, sighted companion climbed onto the porch and lowered her onto the ground, where she quickly pulled herself close to me.

“Alright guys, let’s go,” said the rescuer. “Which way?”

I directed him to the Northern stockgate. The village at night was a different country – all memory, no sight. I held Robert’s jacket, Corine held my arm, and together we moved like a badly designed animal.

We reached the gate and Corine told him to wait, then removed our badges and merit books and put them in the cubby. It was a surprisingly easy walk until we reached the part of the path we had to turn from. One step onto the uneven grass sent us both into shrieking fits.

“What? What is it?” asked the Previous.

“Night terrors,” barked out Corine between shallow breaths.

He sighed and wrapped his jacket around her while I continued to convulse. I must have collapsed. I woke up blind, with a soft hand on my forehead and soothing words in my ears.

“Come on, buddy, you’re okay. It’s just like having your eyes closed.” I had hoped the soothing words would have been from Corine, but they worked just as well.

I got up. “I am scared.”

“Me too, but you know the way like the back of your hand.”

“I can’t see my hands.”

“I can,” said the Previous. “Point me the way.”

We navigated very slowly, tripping over twigs and small holes left by the night digging giant rats, until eventually we were at the flak tower. I asked for a break, and we all sat against the perpetulite. I asked the man to repeat what he had told me about the Prefects relocating people to Corine, which he did.

“If the swans know something is wrong,” she asked, “what is it that’s wrong?”

“At a guess, residents have been unlocking capabilities en masse.”

“Unlocking capabilities?”

“Like Gerald’s counting, Mr. Brick’s photosynthesis, or Ms. Sky’s weather prediction.”

“How does that happen?”

“Malfunction most likely, or someone has been surreptitiously flashing protocol shades while you’re sleeping. Have you had any new visitors to the village?”

“No, but people keep leaving,” I reminded him.

“I overheard your mother talking about Sylvan and Patrick the other week,” he said. “Who are they?”

“Those are just some of the plants she has been growing. They seem to have a mild univisual colour to them, so we limited our tosh sorting and moved all the Greys to the greenhouse. Even Reds are allowed in now.”

“Hm, that might be it. I think we should go, now. This is taking us a lot longer than the two hours you promised.”

We started up anew, our minds clogged with questions galore. What were protocol colours? Who else had new abilities? What did I just step in?

With less mental capacity to watch our headclocks, the time flew by and we lagged behind it. We reached the door’s supposed location at 23:41.

“Is it there?” asked Corine.

The Previous peeled our hands off of his jacket and we heard him walk around a bit. From the snaps of twigs and murmured curses, he seemed to be spiralling.

“Not yet,” he said, returning to us. “But tomorrow is the day.”

“What is through the door?” I asked.

“It was a research facility, to study the subjects up close. My great great grandparents silently rebelled, and raised a commune instead.”

“What kind of subjects? Do you mean Munsellian Doctrine, Sports, or Sewing?”

“What’s a commune? Is that an outdoor toilet?”

He was now mostly talking to himself. Corine and I held each other in the dark to stop from swaying in the lack of visual reference points. “It seems that they’ve discovered the past five decades of reports were just nonsense made up to keep them away. We lost control of the breaching mechanism, as well as deliveries and running water.”

“I don’t understand,” said Corine. “Nonsensical reports are part-and-parcel of post-Epiphanic society.”

“The facility breaches the surface every two months by default. We thought it might be a technical issue, until we noticed the drones had stopped.”

It was clear that this man, or perhaps all of the Previous, spoke in tongues or used such archaic language as to be indistinguishable from madness. As the night continued, so did his babbling.

Just then, a gentle vibration under our feet spooked us and brought us to our knees. A low whirring sound grew slowly in our ears and seemed to come from all directions at once.

“Gerald, open your eyes,” whispered Corine. I had shut them tight as soon as I left my house - the darkness seemed just a touch safer when I refused to look at it. I opened my eyes and looked around until I saw it, a faint glowing circle of indeterminate size and unknowable distance away.

“Thank you,” said the Previous. “My family are just inside. You should come with us, and get off of this island.”

I was about to tell him he was mistaken, and that we must have been in a very different location to what his map depicted, when the circle thinned and a bright white light shone from a magical portal where it once floated. The silhouette of a tall woman stood inside the rectangle.

“Robert, you’re alive.”

“We have to leave. Jacob was right. They know.”

“Right now?”

“Yesterday.”

“Who are they?”

“Locals.”

She reached behind her and threw a satchel at Robert, the Previous man. We heard a click, then a circle of bright white light washed our feet, projected from something in his hand like a swatchman’s torch.

“Look at this.”

He pointed his light at a piece of paper. It was an indecently warm pink colour that made my nose twitch like a rabbit.

“Keep looking, ignore the birds.”

My fingers involuntarily started to play a tiny, invisible piano and I heard the buzzing of insects, perhaps the drones he had mentioned. It progressed into a large cello and the small tweets of starlings, then to an oversized trombone and the cries of a hawk. Suddenly, it stopped. My hands fell to my sides and he clicked off the light.

I could see.

And he had made me Grey.

The grass, all 86,214 visible blades, glowed softly under the light of a giant circle in the sky. There were 2,640 to 2,920 tinier circles that shone around it, twinkling in and out. Some of them moved across the sky in straight lines.

The pair of us stared straight up. A part of the world had been revealed to us that was so vast and indecently resplendent – even without colour – that every treasure we had ever hidden in our valises became, at once, rubbish.

“Munsell’s whimsy!” gasped Corine. “Gerald, your eyes!”

I looked at her. Her pupils had grown in size, mimicking the Previous. On her, they still looked beautiful. We stared at each other for a few moments, before taking in the nightscape surrounding us.

“Where is the colour?” I asked.

“It’ll come back,” said Robert. “When the sun rises. Come inside, quickly.”

We followed him into the brightly lit building, which was nothing more than a spherical closet with a staircase descending into the ground.

“I don’t feel so good,” said Corine, looking around at the new surroundings. The walls were covered in remote viewers and were painted in a sickly yellow-green.

“Me neither,” I admitted. My elbows had started to grow numb. The timing was truly terrible.

It was the Rot.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry,” cried Robert. The Previous woman came over to help him lay us down. “I forgot, I am sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said Corine. I nodded weakly in agreement. Peace with the end was one of the known symptoms. Nobody had ever fought off Mildew.

“We came close,” I said. I was not exactly sure what we were close to, but I felt it.

“You poor things,” said the woman. She laid her own jacket over me as we shivered on the ground. Tears fell from her creepy, cartoonish eyes. Robert the Previous fetched a soothing green from his satchel and showed it to us under the torch light. I counted Corine’s breaths. At the rate they were slowing, she had maybe eighty-seven left.

“Can you do something for me?” I asked them. They knelt beside us and held our hands. It was getting difficult to speak, I could feel the tendrils sprouting in my throat. The only reckless ct of my life – outside of hockeyball – had led me to my end, and I could not quite regret it.

“Of course,” said my former housemate.

“Tell my mother I was careful.”